---
title: proceeds pay all the time
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/proceeds-pay-all-the-time
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/proceeds-pay-all-the-time.md
subtitle: "a grant arrives once a year. the proceeds tree splits, converts, and streams money to places and the people who keep them whenever it moves."
category: proceeds
---

# proceeds pay all the time

*a grant arrives once a year. the proceeds tree splits, converts, and streams money to places and the people who keep them whenever it moves.*

The hay meadow on a land trust's one preserve hums from May to September. The bees and flies that work it never wait for an award letter. The trust's money does: one grant cycle a year, a report due before the next one opens, and a gap in between that the board calls bridge funding.

The meadow, the creek below it, and the wetland at the bottom of the hill keep working whether or not anyone pays them, and the people who keep them are usually paid last and late. The money people trust most, dollars and euros issued by regulated firms and banks, now moves on public ledgers at any hour. [**ensurance**](/proceeds?from=guide) gives a place an account that can receive that money directly and keep routing it to the work. The money is not the meadow, and the account is not the meadow.

This post is about the routing: what happens to money after it arrives, and why it can keep moving between grant cycles. It is for land trusts, watershed councils, and the foundations that fund them.

:::johnson
**a grant is a date. proceeds are a path.** Money that enters the tree follows public rules through splits, swappers, and streams to places and the people who keep them, and anyone can push it along.

[read the tree →](/proceeds?from=guide)
:::

## recurring revenue for land trusts, beyond the grant calendar

**Recurring revenue for land trusts** usually means memberships, monthly donors, stewardship endowments, and leases. All of it is real, and none of it should stop. This post is not a new income line for your trust. It describes how money that enters the ensurance tree is routed. A new agent for your preserve receives what names it directly, such as a certificate sale. It is not a recipient of the tree by default.

**Proceeds** are money that comes in from activity around nature, such as a coin trade, a certificate sale, or an agent being created, and is routed by written rules to places, purposes, and the people who care for them. The rules are public. The route is the same at 3 a.m. on a Sunday as it is on a Tuesday.

Proceeds do not wait for a grant cycle.

That is not a promise of an amount. Nobody here promises a yield or a return, and the amounts in the tree today are small. [The forest does not pay a coupon](/guide/the-forest-does-not-pay-a-coupon?from=guide) explains why we will not dress them up as one. What proceeds offer is a shape: money that moves when it arrives, on rules you can read, rather than once a year on a funder's calendar.

## the proceeds tree in plain words

The whole tree is live and public at [/proceeds](/proceeds?from=guide). Five kinds of part make it up.

| part | what it does | how many today | when it moves |
|---|---|---|---|
| sources | where money enters: coins, certificates, agent creation, markets, field services, story work | 8 | when that activity happens |
| splits | divide what they hold by fixed shares written into the contract | the origin plus its branches | when anyone triggers a distribution |
| swappers | convert what they hold into one currency | 5: USDC, EURC, ETH, cbBTC, ENSURE | when a swap runs |
| streams | release what arrives evenly across a set period | 12, from 3 months to 512 years | steadily, across the period |
| agents | accounts for places, purposes, and groups | about 2,085 | receive and hold what reaches them |

Money from the sources gathers in one **origin split**. From there it branches. One branch is the **natural capital pools**, which divide between the stocks (15 kinds of ecosystem, from boreal forests to wetlands) and the flows (19 services nature provides, such as clean water and pollination). Each stock and each flow has its own agent. [Pollination](/pollination.ensurance?from=guide) and [clean water](/clean-water.ensurance?from=guide) are two of them. Other branches reach named groups, the streams, the swappers, the operating companies that hold and care for the assets, and member distributions. Proceeds go to agents and groups, not to the people who run them; a person is paid only by being named on a split. Member distributions go to accounts that hold an agent (which makes them a member) and hold certificates, or to agents that hold certificates.

So the meadow's pollinators are not a metaphor in this tree. Pollination is a branch with its own account, and money reaches it by the same rules every time.

## splits: anyone can push the money along

A **split** is a contract that divides what it holds by shares written into it. Ours are pull splits. Distributing a split credits each recipient its share. Each recipient then withdraws, and one call can withdraw for every recipient at once.

Distribution is permissionless. Anyone can trigger it: a board treasurer, a volunteer, one of our agents, or a stranger's bot. The shares go to the recipients. The only thing the person who triggers it gets is a small distributor fee on the origin split, which is why a bot will bother.

That is the part a grant cannot copy. A grant moves when a program officer signs. A split moves when anyone, anywhere, at any hour, asks it to.

## swappers: any coin in, steady money out

A **swapper** converts what it holds into its target currency when a swap runs. It does not run on a fixed clock.

The [EURC swapper](/proceeds/0xb589c6363c74bfc6ed36b6acf31afbc6f5dd7761?from=guide) holds 24 different coins right now, among them coins named for boreal forests, pollination, giant redwoods, and the condor, all waiting to be converted into euros. We do not print what they are worth. The count and the names are the point: coins of every kind come in, and the tree has a way to turn them into a currency a crew can spend. [Any coin, steady money](/guide/any-coin-steady-money?from=guide) is the post on that.

## streams: the shape of a paycheck

A **stream** takes what arrives and releases it evenly across a set period. The tree has twelve of them, each twice as long as the one before: 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, and on up to 512 years.

The short streams have the shape of a steady release. The long ones release so slowly that no single meeting can spend them down. The [3-month stream](/proceeds/0x9ee076ba4354e1ab9808a7bd198cbe9a0f15e688?from=guide) holds about two dozen different coins today, among them coins named for giant redwoods and the great horned owl.

One honest caveat. A stream sets a pace, not an amount. If little arrives, little is released. A stream smooths what arrives; it does not guarantee a salary.

## coins pay when they trade

A **general ensurance coin** is a coin named for a stock, a flow, or a place, traded in its own pool on Base. Every swap in that pool pays a pool fee, and the fee goes to the coin's **payout recipient**. That is usually a split that pays agents and the place.

Nobody has to care about nature for this to work. A speculator, a long-term holder, and a bot all pay the same fee. The fee is set when the coin is created and does not depend on anyone's mood that week. Browse the coins at [/general](/general?from=guide).

## what this is not

Proceeds are not a salary. The tree moves when money arrives and someone triggers it, and the amounts today are small. A program that pays a crew on a fixed schedule is not built. Programs that exist trade and allocate between related accounts. Paying people is still a person's decision, and a shared team account pays out only when an admin proposes and the account's signers approve.

Proceeds also do not replace a grant, a membership drive, or an endowment. They run underneath them, between cycles, on rules the board can read.

## the next layer: money that moves on a reading

Today the tree moves when money arrives. The next layer moves money when a place's condition is read. [Parametric ensurance](/guide/what-parametric-ensurance-actually-does?from=guide) is a rule that could release money set aside for a living system when a reading shows that place held its baseline or improved. The account that holds a place and the rule written against it are in place. The reading landing on the account, and the check that reads it, are being wired now. No reading has moved money yet. [When a place changes, money can move](/guide/when-a-place-changes-money-can-move?from=guide) covers how that would work.

## how a land trust uses this

Start with the preserve, not the tree. Give it an agent at [/agents](/agents?from=guide), so the place has an account in its own name. A certificate sold for the preserve pays that account directly, in the same transaction, in the certificate's currency, usually USDC or EURC; [paid on arrival](/guide/paid-on-arrival?from=guide) walks through the steps.

Then read the tree at [/proceeds](/proceeds?from=guide). Every split, swapper, and stream has its own page, with what it holds and where it sends it. If you want to talk about how a preserve, a reach, or a meadow fits in, [write to us](/contact?from=guide&topic=real-money-onchain) and name the place.

## frequently asked questions

### what is recurring revenue for land trusts?

Money that arrives on a repeating basis rather than once per grant: memberships, monthly gifts, endowment draws, leases. Proceeds are different: they are the tree's own routing of money that enters it, by public rules, to the places and groups it names. A land trust is not paid from the tree by default, and no amount or schedule is promised.

### who can trigger a distribution?

Anyone. Distributing a split is permissionless, and the money always goes to the split's recipients, not to the person who triggered it.

### does a stream guarantee a monthly amount?

No. A stream releases what it receives evenly across its period. It sets a pace, not an amount.

### can proceeds be released when a place's condition improves?

Not yet. That is parametric ensurance, and it is being wired now. No reading has moved money yet.

## next steps

Open the [proceeds tree](/proceeds?from=guide) and follow one branch from the origin to an agent. Then open the [3-month stream](/proceeds/0x9ee076ba4354e1ab9808a7bd198cbe9a0f15e688?from=guide) and see what it holds. Watershed councils and landscape partnerships can see how ensurance fits shared work on the [regional collaboratives page](/solutions/regional-collaboratives?from=guide&topic=real-money-onchain).

## the series

1. [the money you trust is already onchain](/guide/the-money-you-trust-is-already-onchain?from=guide) (read first)
2. [a stablecoin is a dollar with an address](/guide/a-stablecoin-is-a-dollar-with-an-address?from=guide)
3. [every currency is coming onchain](/guide/every-currency-is-coming-onchain?from=guide)
4. [are stablecoins safe?](/guide/are-stablecoins-safe?from=guide)
5. [paid on arrival](/guide/paid-on-arrival?from=guide)
6. [proceeds pay all the time](/guide/proceeds-pay-all-the-time?from=guide)
7. [any coin, steady money](/guide/any-coin-steady-money?from=guide)
8. [fund the dependency from the treasury you already hold](/guide/fund-the-dependency-from-the-treasury-you-already-hold?from=guide)